Few subjects have troubled Jews across the globe this past summer as much as the recent conflict in Israel. The violence portrayed on the news stimulated a consequential outpouring of support from Jewish communities worldwide. But an art group based in Brooklyn is showing support through a unique means: a spiritual defense.

Sara Erenthal likes to think of her one-woman gallery show as a brief memoir. From the moment that visitors walk through the door of the Soapbox Gallery in Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights, they enter her life, first via her childhood bedroom.

Common threads in Israel Film Center Festival and annual German series.

06/10/2014

George Robinson

Special To The Jewish Week

At first glance the second annual Israel Film Center Festival and the newest version of Kino! Festival of New German Films would seem an unlikely pairing of events. Even granting the long and complicated history of Jews and Germans, there have been years in which these two events have had little, if anything, in common. But this year, they not only overlap one another thematically and on the calendar, with both running June 12-19, they even share a film.

Israeli artist Gil Yefman takes on the subject of sexual violence and the forced prostitution of women during the Shoah, a focus not often presented in Holocaust history, and he does so through a literal hook, the crochet hook.

Tribeca’s Synagogue for the Arts, which is an architectural masterwork itself, is hosting a new exhibit in its downstairs gallery space, featuring work by Yona Verwer, a Dutch-born, New York-based artist and Heather Stoltz, also a New York artist. Each looks to the topic of vulnerability in New York City.

One of the New York City’s best-kept secrets, The Hebrew Home at Riverdale is a treasure trove of unexpected delights. The permanent and rather eclectic collection housed there contains more than 5,000 works of art. Prepare to be surprised by the array: Around one corridor, Andy Warhol’s “Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century,” around another William Wegman’s iconic Weimaraner photos. Here an Alex Katz, there a Picasso, or lurking behind a column, a Ben Shahn or Louise Nevelson. And be sure to stare back at the “Portrait of Thomas Chaloner,” from the school of Anthony Van Dyck (c. 1630s) with its eponymous subject coolly gazing out at diners in the facility’s River Café. The sculpture garden, with its sweeping view of the Hudson River, includes work by Herbert Ferber and Menashe Kadishman. And, in the hallways, don’t miss the collection of Madame Alexander First-Lady Dolls.

The famous illuminated manuscript will become a multimedia musical presentation.

08/22/2013

Gabriela Geselowitz

Jewish Week Correspondent

The Sarajevo Haggadah, the famous illuminated manuscript, is the inspiration for the new multimedia art project entitled, “The Sarajevo Haggadah: Music of the Book,” the Foundation for Jewish Culture has announced.